It's a teddy bear's world

While in Paris, visiting my family and friends, I was happy to see that the big teddy bears I'd spotted on past trips in shop windows, at the terraces of many cafés, and even sometimes inside a restaurant, as you can see from the above picture, are still there.

The first one appeared in 2018, in a bookshop located in the Gobelins area (south of the city). The owner wanted to inject a bit of much needed softness into Parisian life. Customers and passers-by loved it. Very soon, he started planting many more teddy bears across the city in shops, bars, and restaurants, achieving the impossible: making Parisians smile!

During the pandemic, those teddy bears helped customers keep their distance from one another in the kindest way possible.

And now, they've become a feature, closely associated with businesses across Paris. I, myself, can't think of the restaurant Le Voltigeur, rue de Francs-Bourgeois, in the famous Marais area, without smiling at the thought of the gang of teddy bears perched at the balcony above!

#paris #visitingparis